A Cardijn Reflection: Is it time to See-Judge-Act on who we are as a society?
Another Shooting in the US.
I posted this on my allthingscyberspace.com blog but wanted to add some notes for those involved in the Cardijn movements, especially those in the United States.
Think about the movements throughout history that centered on the work and teachings of Joseph Cardijn. Think of YCW, YCS, CFM, the Student Catholic Action, the Paulian Association, and Palms Australia. Cardijn, as we all know, spent his life dedicated to social activism and working towards improving working-class young men and women. Cardijn made a particular effort to spend a good portion of his life and effort in bringing the core messages of faith in the Gospel, the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, back to the working class, who he believed were neglected, and today the working class, and what we call the “middle-class” are neglected in understanding the same message.
A 20-year-old shooter’s records show as a registered Republican, a young middle-class male in suburbia America. What does this say to us about our culture and our society when so many shooters are young men? Just look at all the past shootings, the ages, their education, and their upbringing in our society.
The shooter is from what we call middle-class White America. Good schools, middle-class incomes, 97.10% White, 1.02% African American. So Why do Young White Men commit so Many Mass Shootings? or what we call “Event Shootings”? Is this an identity issue with our culture? Our Society? White Privilege?
According to FBI arrest data, the peak age for violent crime is 16–24. “This is a period of substantial transition in an individual’s life when they’re less likely to have significant attachments in their life that deter them from criminal violence,” Pete Simi, professor of criminology at the University of Nebraska
What does this say about our society and how we establish sexual identity roles? What is the emphasis we place on those roles, and how do we attempt to legislate those roles? Ask any teacher what they see in their classrooms with students between 16 -24,
Teachers will tell you there is something to personality and brain development between those ages that we should focus on as a society. Instead, we are creating legislation to define who we are and are not and what we should and should not be. Will that solve the core problem?
Go back to Pete Simi, professor of criminology, and his statement and use the See-Discern-Act method to think this through.
A final note: Many in middle-class America pridefully reference their European heritage. We hear it in political speeches and often see it in legislation. So why not look at Europe? Do we see the same problem to the same extent? Italy has a Gun Culture but No Mass Shootings or “Event Shootings.” Why not? Lessons learned.
